


The Ruins

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 09:24:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11964498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: "Maybe I'll come back as a lesbian."





	The Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> I took a break from writing the sequel to "Let Your Arms Become Propellers" and wrote this little post-Season 3 future-fic, which has nothing to do with anything. I ran into a bit of trouble with canon timelines (which isn't an unusual problem, I gather), and also with canon window placements, but life's too short. Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you think.

The moon is nearly full, and although Grace sleeps better in the pitch dark, Frankie likes to let the moonlight in. The curtains are drawn partially back, and the window is open a few inches. The light tints everything it touches a silvery blue, and the white sheets—drawn halfway up their naked bodies because Grace can’t sleep without something covering her—glow even though her eyes ought to have adjusted by now. 

Grace is wide awake. In eight hours, Brianna and Mallory will arrive for brunch, and she and Frankie are going to tell them everything. Grace supposes there’s some sort of societal reason why she keeps putting herself in situations where she uses a special portmanteau of two ordinary meals as the stage from which to share sexual revelations with her kids. But right now, coming out over omelettes, coffee, and mimosas sounds about as absurd as coming out at a mini-golf course, or one of those historical reenactment villages. In fact, Grace herself has had the experience of coming out at a Del Taco, because Frankie wanted to tell Bud, Coyote, and Allison in a place where her soul would be at peace.

She’s been seeking distractions for hours, dinner and drinks fading into TV, TV fading into sex. Now it’s well past time for the day to end, and there’s nothing left to do but try not to think about tomorrow. She’d do almost anything to avoid it, including tackling another problem. 

Like all her problems, this one is a matter of timing. “Do you really believe in reincarnation?” Grace asks. 

Frankie is quiet for so long that Grace assumes she must not have heard, or is lost in her own thoughts or too sleepy to respond. She rolls onto her side so her back is to Frankie and scoots closer, her tried and true trick—if three weeks can be “tried and true”—to jostle Frankie awake enough to spoon her or rub her back. Frankie takes the bait, immediately rolls closer to fit her body around Grace. She runs her fingers against Grace’s sternum, settles in with her palm planted at the center of her ribs, her fingers between Grace’s breasts. Grace is aware of the sweat drying on her chest now that she faces the source of the breeze cooling the room. 

“Who knows?” Frankie says. Grace jumps at the sound of the voice she didn’t think she’d hear again for hours. With Frankie’s mouth so near her ear, it’s almost too loud. “I believe in the value of ideas.”

“But you aren’t convinced? Sometimes you talk like you’re convinced—”

It’s funny to feel rather than see Frankie shrug. “Nah.” Frankie sneaks her fingers higher, and out of all the existential things Grace could say, only a happy sigh leaves her mouth. “Grace, is this about Babe?”

The one-year anniversary of Babe’s death wasn’t long ago. They’ve been talking about her a lot, in the context of human frailty, the context of them, the context of missing their friend. “No,” Grace says definitively. _This is about your death and mine. About picking the most unlikely moment to really need time to stretch out._

Whenever Grace is conscious of making a decision to speak or stay silent, she imagines a path from heart to throat. The words she wants to say travel up and down the path a few times. Then, into the cool blue room: “Maybe I’ll come back as a lesbian.”

“Again?” Frankie asks lightly, her voice mercifully quiet. 

“Yes, again.” Grace laughs. 

“A _human_ lesbian?”

“Yes, a human lesbian.”

“But you are a human lesbian. Doesn’t that mean you’ve already reached nirvana?” Now she feels rather than sees Frankie’s ironic little smile.

It’s a long journey, coaxing a sentence all the way out from the center of one’s body. “But if I got another chance, maybe I’d do it right, you know, maybe I’d be smart enough to not waste so much time.”

“Oh, sweetie.”

“I know I should just be grateful for what I have,” Grace says. That’s how Frankie feels—grateful. But Frankie loved Sol, loved Jacob, has loved nearly every year of her life. Grace is different. She’s survived almost an entire lifetime of sublimating herself away, and now she’s thankful but hungry, furious with herself or the world or both. For Frankie, this relationship is a gift. It would be a gift for Grace too, except “gift” is too mild a word to describe something you’d die to keep. And if someone tried to take Frankie away from her now, she’d do anything short of commit murder to prevent it from happening. She finally knows her own strength, and she’s angry half the time, turned on all the time, drunk on the overwhelm of getting stripped down so everyone including herself can plainly see what she wants most. If that’s the gift of human lesbianism, maybe she can take it with her into the next life, figure out a better schedule for the inevitable disruption, fumble her way into herself in a dormitory at the age of nineteen.

Frankie clears her throat diplomatically. “If this is the only life we get…” _Where’s cultural appropriation now?_ Grace wonders. _Where’s the Frankie of East meeting West, of endless possibilities?_ “...I mean, if this is really it, I’d rather live it out here with you than anywhere else.” She shifts in the bed, settles back down. “I’m glad Sol left me.”

“Mm?”

“You’re better.” 

Grace grins. She knows she ought to be satisfied with _good_ , but she craves _better_ even more. “I’m glad, too.” 

“I don’t care if there’s nothing but this.”

“Maybe there’s heaven,” Grace suggests, as convinced and unconvinced as she always is.

“Heaven is a place on earth, baby.”

“You’re so horrible.” 

Grace stretches her restless legs as far as she can, which sends her calves colliding with Frankie’s shins, and the slight burn in her thighs reminds her of another feeling. They were _just_ all over each other, and haven’t even stopped touching since, but she’s ready again, her nervous stomach replaced with a fluttery twist of arousal. She pulls Frankie’s hand against it. 

“We’ll have sex hundreds of times before we die, Grace. I promise.” _Like now_ , Grace thinks, because Frankie sits up, leaning to kiss her forehead on the way, and grabs the jar of lube off the nightstand. “We’ll get you caught up. Get us both caught up, honestly.” 

“Okay,” Grace says, her voice already shaky with want, and Frankie lies back down behind her. 

It’s soft and slow this time. Frankie kisses the back of her head in time with the brush of her fingers, pulls gently at Grace’s hair with her other hand, and Grace is quiet, crying out only when Frankie enters her. Then they talk. “Please,” Grace says. “Please, please.” The word is nonsensical; she already has what she’s begging for, this ruinous, perfect gift. 

“If you need it again in the morning, wake me up early.” Frankie likes to talk about Grace’s desire for sex as nothing less than a need, likes to talk about it even when they’re in the middle of having it. It was embarrassing at first; Grace already dealt in currencies of food and alcohol, and now she needed something else? It’s not embarrassing anymore, not now that she’s imagining having to rush through the cooking tomorrow morning, hair still damp from the shower, because they couldn’t stop fucking each other. Just the thought intensifies every plunge of Frankie’s fingers. 

“Please,” Grace says again. One of her hands is a fist with a heartbeat in it, and she uses the other to touch her clit. She’s wet everywhere Frankie has touched, and she comes with slow, radiant pulses, an impossible warmth, her breath shuddering past the edge of the bed and into some small portion of the world. 

There’s a little lift of pleasure as Frankie leaves her, but otherwise every part of her is weighted down with exhaustion. She can’t notice the brightness of the room because she can’t open her eyes. “Oh god,” she murmurs, and there’s another kiss against the back of her head. “You set an alarm, right?” 

“Seven a.m.,” Frankie confirms. “You're lucky I love your kids. We’re going to get like four hours of sleep.”

Early in past relationships, Grace has managed to wake herself up before countless alarms, has stolen away to men’s unfamiliar bathrooms to swish mouthwash, put on an undetectable but essential layer of makeup, take care of eyelash maintenance. She’s spent the last three weeks hardly worried about that stuff at all, but tomorrow Frankie will see Grace as tired as she’s ever seen her—she’ll be tired enough that every bone in her face will seem to show, to say nothing of the bruise-colored puffiness around her eyes. The thought of being seen that way doesn’t fill her with happiness, but at least it doesn’t jar her out of her sleepy sort of indifference. 

“‘night,” Frankie says, her body a pressure and weight against which Grace can rest. She’ll wake with the alarm, not a second earlier, and she won’t remember her last thoughts before falling asleep.


End file.
